Commonly called “The Tribe,” the Cleveland Indians are one
of the original American League baseball teams, founded in 1900 as the
Cleveland Blues. Cleveland has had the same baseball team ever since its
inception in 1900 leading to a large and vast history for the single team.
Before 1900, professional Cleveland baseball took the form of the Cleveland
Forest Citys in 1869 and joined the National Association of Professional Base
Ball Players in 1871, the nation’s first professional baseball league. The
Forest Citys played horribly and were soon supplanted by the Cleveland Blues in
1879 when they joined the National League. Professional baseball was absent
from Cleveland for two years until the Cleveland Spiders, right, joined the American
Association in 1887. With the
American Association crumbling, the Spiders
jumped ship to the National League and enjoyed success there. However, the
Spiders’ owner also bought the St. Louis Cardinals and was soon shipping
Cleveland players to St. Louis. Eventually the Spiders were disbanded after the
1899 season. But Cleveland would have a new team the following year.

In 1900, the minor league Western League changed its named
to the American League and moved its Grand Rapids ball team to Cleveland,
becoming the Cleveland Blues. The next year, the American League angered the
National League by becoming a major league. The Blues were one of the founding
members.

In 1902, the Blues changed its name to the Bronchos and
played under that name until 1904. For the 1905 season, the Bronchos became the
Naps, named after their new star player Napolean Lajoie, left. When Lajoie was
shipped off to the Philadelphia Athletics (now Oakland Athletics) in 1914, the
organization decided it was time for a new name. The name “Indians” was chosen
in response to the Boston Braves (now Atlanta Braves) who were known as the
Miracle Braves at that time.

The Indians won their first World Series in 1920 by
defeating the Brooklyn Robins (now the Los Angeles Dodgers) five games to two. After
that win, the Indians would become a mediocre team until 1936, where a
17-year-old pitcher named Bob Feller picked the Indians’ fortunes up and
created a good team again.

However, it wasn’t long until the team fell apart again and
a change in ownership and
manager also signaled a change in venues as the
Indians permanently moved to Cleveland Municipal Stadium from League Park in
1947 (the Indians had played weekend games in Municipal Stadium starting in
1932).

In 1948, the Indians were forced to play a one-game playoff
with the Boston Red Sox for the American League championship. The Indians won
and faced the Boston Braves, the team the Indians were named after, for the
World Series. The Indians won in six games but the Indians have not win another
World Series since then despite going to the Series in 1954, 1995, and 1997.

Then the Indians hit a low point in their history. From 1959
to 1993 the team could only manage one third-place finish and five fourth-place
finish. All the other times they finished at the bottom of the standings. It
was so bad that in 1966, the team was rumored to be relocated due to poor
attendance but it never happened as the team was sold off once again. 1974 saw
the infamous Ten Cent Beer Night, bloodied fan on left, in which fans rioted and forced Cleveland to
forfeit the game to the Texas Rangers.

The film Major League
came out in 1989, during the
Indians’ slumping years, which showcased the
Indians as a hopeless team that went from worst to first. In 1993, the last
year of the slump, the Indians suffered a tragedy during Spring Training in
which a boat carrying pitchers Steve Olin, Tim Crews, and Bob Ojedacrashed and
killed Olin and Crews. Ojeda was seriously injured, did not play that season,
and retired the next year.

The opening of the new Jacobs Field in 1994 was a sign of
the new and improved Indians. They were only one game out of first place when
the infamous baseball strike ocurred to wipe out the rest of the 1994 season.
The next season, the first one after the strike, the Indians finished with a
100-44 record and won the first ever divisional title under the new MLB divisional
system. The Indians lost the World Series in six games to the Atlanta Braves.
In 1997, the Indians went to the World Series again but were defeated by the
Florida Marlins.

In 2007, the Indians were one game away from advancing to
the World Series for the first time since 1997. Despite being up three games to
one against the Boston Red Sox, the Red Sox won the next three games and went
on to win the World Series.

The Cleveland Indians was consumed by corporate sponsorship
in 2008 and Jacobs
Field was renamed to Progressive Field. The fans still refer
to the stadium as “The Jake.”

Currently the Indians are in second place in the American
League Central with a 12-14 record, three games behind the Chicago White Sox.

In the past decade, the Indians have been criticized for the
use of the name “Indians” and their mascot Chief Wahoo, featured in the Indians’
primary logo. With a history deeply rooted in the Indians name and Chief Wahoo,
it is unlikely the Cleveland team will change its name in the near future.

Historical Fact: The Indians signed the American League’s
first black player, Larry
Doby, left, 11 weeks after Jackie Robinson signed with the
National League Brooklyn Dodgers (now Los Angeles Dodgers). In 1948, Satchel
Paige became the Major League’s oldest rookie and the first ever black pitcher.
Then the Indians made records again in 1975 with the hiring of Frank Robinson
as the Major’s first black manager.

April 28, 2008

Kevin Lepage, left, needs to stay away from the NASCAR garage for awhile.

In the waning laps of the Nationwide Series race, Lepage was coming out of the pits while the gigantic pack of cars racing at 180+ mph were steaming down the stretch. NASCAR rules say a driver can't blend back onto the racetrack until the backstretch but Lepage didn't care and he, for some reason, thought 110 mph was the same speed as the pack of cars coming at him. The end result wasn't pretty. Take a look:

Then Lepage had the nerve to blame Carl Edwards and everybody else except himself for the wreck. Although Lepage later profusely apologized for everything after he saw the replay, it would probably still be a good idea to not race in NASCAR for awhile.

Reed Sorenson and Matt Kenseth continued their 2008 struggles. Sorenson blew his engine only five laps into the race and Matt Kenseth blew a tire, hitting the wall, and finishing a miserable 41st.

For the beginning of the race, it was looking as if it was just going to be a boring, single file racing until Jamie McMurray and Denny Hamlin teamed up and rocketed around by themselves on the outside groove (in which Dale Earnhardt, Jr. jokingly said over the radio: "Rude."). Hamlin eventually took the lead and soon all heck would break loose. It wasn't long until the outside groove started moving and the rest of the race consisted of two- to three-wide racing, and sometimes even four-wide.

Tony Stewart was the car to beat in this race. Unfortunately, it wasn't meant to be. For starters, he blew a tire and scraped the wall. Luckily he was far enough up on the racetrack that he didn't cause much damage. With the racing getting hectic, Stewart was moving up the field, but a gap he found to advance forward suddenly grew
smaller and he bounced off the cars of Bobby Labonte and Junior, triggering a little Big One that collected Stewart, in his #20 Toyota left, Labonte, McMurray, Junior, Martin Truex, Jr., and Kurt Busch.

I did not want Kyle Busch to win but at Talladega when a driver is running in first
when the white flag waves, usually that means that driver is not going to win. It's the finicky draft and the final turn passes that create this interesting dilemma. Kyle Busch was in the lead so it meant he wasn't going to win. Montoya was in second, hoping for his first oval win and proving road courses aren't the only tracks he can win.

Next week is short track racing under the lights at Richmond International Raceway. It was this race two years ago where Junior had his last win. Also winless in 2008: Jeff Gordon, Matt Kenseth, Tony Stewart, Kevin Harvick, and Kurt Busch.

Haas CNC Racing, a race team that is more known for its mediocracy on the track than for fielding winning cars, is supposedly Stewart's target for a part-ownership deal. Haas CNC Racing currently fields the #66 State Water Heater Chevrolet driven by Scott Riggs and the #70 Haas Automation Chevrolet, right, formerly driven by Jeremy
Mayfield. Haas CNC Racing has no wins to its credit and shows only ocassional flashes of potential but has never come close to winning a race. Could Stewart change the fortunes of Haas much like Joe Gibbs Racing gave Toyota a better future this year?

Many fans say a driver is only as good as his equipment. Looks like Tony Stewart is about to prove them wrong. On the plus side, Haas CNC Racing is basically a satellite team for the powerful Hendrick Motorsports. The team gets its chassis and engines from Hendrick.

A move to Haas would also mean a reunion between Stewart and General Motors. The two have enjoyed a successful relationship since the beginning and Stewart, according to sources, seems to be a bit miffed about Gibbs' switch to Toyota and wants to go back to being a GM driver, which Stewart deems to be very important to him.

If Stewart does indeed leave Gibbs after this season, that would leave the #20 Toyota's seat open for highly touted driver Joey Logano, left. As for Haas, that organization would gladly leave the seat of the #70 open for Stewart since Jeremy Mayfield left the team just before Phoenix two weeks ago.

Before talking about the Storm and the Walleye, the link between Toledo and hockey has to be discussed first. The city of Toledo has a history of hockey going back to
1947, when the Toledo Sports Arena, right, was first opened. The first team the arena
held as tenants was the Toledo Mercurys, from 1947 to 1962. Playing in the now defunct International Hockey League, the Mercurys had the
distinction of being the first team to win multiple Turner Cup championships,
and the first to do so consecutively. In fact, the team’s first championship
came in its first year of play in the 1947-48 season. Briefly, in the
1949-50
season, the Mercurys switched to the Eastern Amateur Hockey League and became
the Buckeyes but returned to its previous league and team name the next season.
The Mercurys won the championship two more times in the 1950-51 and 1951-52 seasons before folding after the 1961-62 season.

The Toledo Blades replaced the Mercurys in the IHL for the
1963-64 season. The Blades played in the Arena from 1963 to 1970. The Blades enjoyed the same
success as the Mercurys by winning the Turner Cup in its first year and winning
it again in 1967. In 1970, the
Blades changes its name to the Hornets, playing under that name until 1974
when
the Hornets became the Goaldiggers (get it?). The Hornet years didn’t see as much success until the name
change to Goaldiggers. As the Goaldiggers, the IHL team scored four more
championships, in 1975 (team pictured right), 1978, 1982, and 1983. However, hockey would leave the
Toledo for a few years when the Goaldiggers moved after the 1985-86 season to
Kansas City where the team was once again known as the Blades.

The Toledo Storm entered the East Coast Hockey League, now
simply the ECHL, in 1991 and proved to be a strong team right off the bat,
repeating the early successes of the Storm’s two predecessors. The Storm had
won their conference in its first year in play, although the Storm didn’t make
the championship game after being defeated in the first round. After that year, for the 1992-93 and 1993-94 seasons, the Storm won two consecutive
championships. Those two seasons were the only ones where the Storm scored a
championship.

In its 16 seasons of play, the Storm have not made the
playoffs only three times – 1999-00, 2001-02, and 2003-04.

In 2007, the Toledo Mud Hensbought the Toledo Storm and decided
to build a new arena for the team, replacing the aging Toledo Sports Arena,
which was razed in 2007 after 60 years of hockey. The ECHL agreed to suspend
operations of the Storm while the new Toledo Downtown Arena, concept art pictured left, was being built. During
this suspension of operations, the team also underwent a name change. In
February of 2008, the Storm officially became the Walleye and will begin play
for the 2009-10 season.

Historical Fact: In 1996, the Storm featured the first
woman, Erin Whitten, right, to
play a
professional hockey game in a position other
than goalie. Although she was indeed a goalie, she played as a forward for 18 seconds in a game. She was also the
first US-born woman to play pro hockey and the first female pro goaltender to
record a victory - in 1993.

April 20, 2008

On Wednesday, June 4, many NASCAR drivers and a couple of NHRA drivers will take to the dirt at Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio, in the Old Spice Prelude to a Dream. I'm excited for it because I just bought tickets for the race and will get to see some of my favorite NASCAR drivers, such as Clint Bowyer, two-time champion Tony Stewart, and Carl Edwards, up close and personal on a tiny half-mile clay oval. Carl Edwards won this race last year in a thrilling battle with Kyle Busch and Jeff Gordon.

This event is more than racing for fun. The ticket proceeds will go towards charity, particulary the Victory Junction Gang Camp and the construction of a new Camp in Kansas City. Tony Stewart, the owner of Eldora Speedway, has put this event on since 2005, benefiting the Camp and the Tony Stewart Foundation. Many may know Stewart as the hot headed driver of the #20 Home Depot Toyota but he is the most charitable driver on the circuit and I applaud him for that. And I have to take my hat off for the other drivers - yes, even Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin - for taking the time out of their schedules to race in such a worthy event.

General admission tickets are only $23 for ages 16 and up, $13 for ages 12-15, and $8
for ages 0-11. Reserved seating is $2 extra for each age group.

The event will be an interesting experience and I suggest you race fans should take the decent two-hour trip to Eldora for some dirt track action starring your favorite NASCAR drivers.

April 15, 2008

With all the sports news out there, I thought a weekly review of local sports teams might be useful for those fans who are only beginning to understand the pleasure of local sports.

Every Tuesday, or close to it, I'll present the history of sports teams in the area from Fostoria to Toledo to Detroit and even to Cleveland and Columbus. While I'll start with some professional and major college teams such as BGSU Falcons, Detroit Red Wings and Cleveland Cavaliers, I won't forget the smaller teams and schools. Bluffton, Fostoria and Hopewell-Loudon will have their day as well.

From time to time, I may even sprinkle in defunct teams - teams that either no longer exist or moved to another city. Today I bring you the jewel of the Toledo area: the Toledo Mud Hens

The Toledo Mud Hens have a long and distinguished history
with the city of Toledo. Baseball had existed in Toledo since 1883, with the
Mud Hens name being first used in 1896 with the purchase of the club by Charles
Strobel. The name “mud hen” came from the local waterfowl that inhabited the
marshlands next to Bay View Park, the team’s original stadium.

The popularity of the Mud Hens outside of Toledo can be
attributed to Toledo native Jamie Farr, famous for his portrayal of Corporal
Max Klinger in the hit show MASH.

The Mud Hens have been associated with the Detroit Tigers
since 1987 and had been a farm team of the organization from 1967 to 1973 as
well. From 1965 to 1966, believe it or not, the Mud Hens were the farm team of
the New York Yankees when they moved the Richmond Virginians to Toledo. Before
then, Toledo had been without baseball for nine seasons, from 1956 to 1964. The
Mud Hens also enjoyed associations with the Philadelphia Phillies (1974-75),
the Cleveland Indians (1976-77), and the Minnesota Twins (1978-86) with Kirby
Puckett being the most famous player to come out of the organization. Before the
team moved, the Mud Hens was the farm team of the New York Giants (now the San
Francisco Giants) in 1930, the St. Louis Browns (now the Baltimore Orioles)
from 1936 to 1948, and the Milwaukee Braves (now the Atlanta Braves) from 1953
to 1955.

While the Mud Hens team has been with Toledo since 1896 (and
the team itself was around since 1883 as the Blue Stockings, Maumees, and White
Stockings), the current team is actually the second team to take the Mud Hens
name.

The Mud Hens were a founding member of the minor league American
Association in 1902. From 1914 to 1915, the Mud Hens were temporarily moved to
Cleveland to settle a territorial threat to make sure a team played in the
Cleveland Indians’ ballpark – League Park – every day. The Mud Hens were
replaced by a South-Michigan League team for those two seasons. When the Mud
Hens returned for 1916, they took the name Iron Men but the Mud Hens name was
used again in 1919.

In the 1950s, the Mud Hens
suffered attendance problems and they moved in 1952 to Charleston, West
Virginia to become the Senators. Baseball soon returned to Toledo when the
Milwaukee Brewers of the American Association were forced to move. They chose Toledo
to become the Toledo Sox and attendance grew while winning an AA pennant.
However, attendance fell off again and the team moved to Wichita to become the
Wichita Braves. Then there was nine years of baseball silence in Toledo.

Ned Skeldon, left, was instrumental in remodeling the Lucas County
Fairgrounds stadium to be suitable for a new baseball team and it was
successful as the Yankees moved the Richmond Virginians to Toledo in 1965. The
team took up the Mud Hens mantle, a name already rich in history of the area.

The current Mud Hens team has been playing in Toledo since and even brought home two consecutive Governor's Cups, in 2005 and 2006, the International League's version of the championship.

Despite being an older team, the Mud Hens have used few stadiums as its home field. Bay View Park is famous for the location where the
team received its name. The Mud Hens, and the teams before it, played in Bay
View until 1897 when they began playing in Armory Park. Their tenure there
ended in 1909 when their new stadium, Swayne Field, opened. It would be almost
half a century later (with the exception of their play in League Park from 1914 to 1915) until they left Swayne Field in 1955.

Lucas County
Fairgrounds Stadium/Ned Skeldon Stadium became the Mud Hens’ home when the team
returned to the Toledo area in 1965 and they played there until 2001. In 2002,
the Mud Hens moved to a shiny, new downtown ballpark called Fifth Third Field
which has since been hailed as one of the best
ballparks in all of the minor
leagues.

As of today, the Mud Hens are currently in third place in
the West division, with a 7-4 record and 1.5 games back from first place.

Fun Fact: On November 1, 2007, the Mud Hens made an offer to
Alex Rodriguez, left, to play third base for the team, obviously a joke in the light
of ARod’s drama over possibly opting out of his contract with the Yankees.

Historical Fact: The then Toledo Blue Stockings, in 1884,
was the first major league team to have African-American players.

April 14, 2008

Pole-sitter Ryan Newman in the Alltel Dodge, left, was hoping for a better race at Phoenix. He never got it.

Despite sitting on the pole, leading 37 laps and running well in the top ten, his engine expired 134 laps into the 312 lap race - not even halfway through. He didn't only take himself out, though.

The oil resulting from his explosive engine caused many cars behind him to spin out and wreck, including points leader Jeff Burton. Burton didn't hit anything, however, and finished the race in sixth, but numerous cars fighting to stay in the top 35 weren't as lucky. The race was red flagged since Newman spewed oil around the entire track.

His victory at Daytona was supposed to be a sign of good things to come except he keeps finding himself going the wrong way in the standings. From leading the points at Daytona, he is now 12th after the eighth race of the season, the last spot that gets into the Chase for the Sprint Cup... and 13th-place Jeff Gordon is hungry for that spot.While my ill feelings toward Ryan Newman have definately thawed in the past year,
they haven't for Jimmie Johnson, right. He decided to not play it safe and played the fuel mileage game, giving Hendrick Motorsports (Jeff Gordon, Johnson, Dale Earnhardt, Jr., and Casey Mears) its first win of the season. After Hendrick's domination last year - half of the 36 races won last year were from Hendrick drivers - it's surprising it took eight races for the organization to win this year.

To close things up, I just want to point out two other drivers. Poor, poor Matt Kenseth. What a rotten past few races he's had. This week his car didn't want to turn so he found himself in the wall. And I have to give props to Bobby Labonte, left. Early in the race it was reported he was running on seven cylinders (the engines have eight). Usually this means a driver falls quickly to the back and gets lapped over and over again. Not so for Labonte. He brought that baby home in 12th. Not bad for a car that wasn't up to full speed.

NASCAR has an off weekend so in two weeks it's bump-drafting, nail-biting action at the Aaron's 499 at Talladega Superspeedway.

In the latest confirmation that the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry is far beyond sanity, the Yankees went through the effort over the weekend of digging up a Boston jersey that had been planted in the concrete of the ball club's new stadium. The dirty deed was done by a construction worker who, trying to give his beloved Bosox any boost he could, covertly planted the jersey under the visiting team's clubhouse in the hopes of initiating a curse to match the infamous Curse of the Bambino, used by some fans as cause for the 86 years between world championships won by the Red Sox.

Many Yankee fans are joking about the matter, with some saying the above photo was simply a hoax to help ease the superstitious fears of New York players and fans. The "staged photo" theory actually makes sense to me the more I think about it, and definitely isn't above the realm of possibility. Look at how clean that jersey looks! Whether staged or not, the fact the team went through the jersey-extraction process shows it realizes many people do take great stock in superstitions in the most superstitious of sports.

Word is the Yankees could seek charges on the offending construction worker, a notion I realize is utterly ridiculous and nonsensical, but one I'm also ashamed to say I can understand -- especially when these two teams are involved. The other day I read a message board posting by a Yankees fan who claimed a bunch of Boston jerks poured beer on he and his Yankees-jersey-wearing child in Fenway Park (right) .

Yeah, you could say these guys take their baseball seriously -- way more than us mild-mannered Tigers and Indians fans in this part of the country. I've never been the most popular guy in the bar, but I was in October 2006 when I wore my Tigers cap to a bar across the street from Fenway. The Tigers were playing the Yankees, you see. I've never gotten so many thumbs-up and "Go Tigers!" cheers in my life.

And as unnecessary as the Yankees digging up the jersey may have been, I'm sure the Red Sox would have dug up a Derek Jeter jersey were one found to have been buried in Fenway Park. Although that would have been tough, as the park was built in 1912, well before Jeter ever donned the pinstriped uniform.

Now that their hopes for the buried Ortiz jersey to curse their hated rivals has been dashed, Bosox fans have to hope the extraction will dig Ortiz out of his 3-for-43 slump he's found himself in to start the season.

They called in a crew to jackhammer through the concrete and get the offending jersey, a David Ortiz, out.

“The first thought was, you know, it’s never a good thing to be buried in cement when you’re in New York,” Yankees President Randy Levine said in an associated press report. “But then we decided, why reward somebody who had really bad motives and was trying to do a really bad thing?”

A really bad thing? Seriously? It's a jersey! I'm sure a Yankees fan could find some way to mess up Fenway Park in a juvenile harmless way as well. In fact, I'm sure someone already has.

To top it all off, there may be criminal charges against the Yankee hating construction worker.

What a joke. My husband hates the Yankees, but I never cared one way or the other. Now, while I still hold no ill will against the players, I can safely say the administration is lacking in intelligence.

With the damage they did to a perfectly good foundation, they'll have to pay to get it repaired and that shouldn't be on the construction worker. There was no good reason to remove that jersey and it was the choice of the administration to destroy the concrete.

Honestly, and we wonder why poverty is such a big issue. At least the humble and well behaved Yankees fans don't have to deal with a piece of fabric buried in concrete, though, and that's all that matters.

April 12, 2008

First of all, as proof that my favorite hockey team has not made the playoffs in years, it is indeed Lord Stanley's Cup. I knew that, I swear.

The Washington Capitals did end up winning the game last night but it was a hard
fought game. Thanks to the Flyers scoring three goals within three minutes in the second period, Philadelphia was up 4-2 over the Caps in the third period. However, the Caps tied it up and Alexander Ovechkin, limited to only three shots in the entire game, put one in the net to win the game.

Now time for some agony. While blocking a shot from Mike Green while the Capitals
were on the power play, Patrick Thoresen was hit hard in the groin by the puck. He was taken to a hospital in Washington and reports say he might lose a testicle. Take a look if you want. Ouch.

On the baseball front, there are reports of a certain construction worker at the new Yankee Stadium. According to rumors, he buried a David Ortiz, right, Red Sox jersey in a slab
of concrete where the visiting team's clubhouse will be. The New York Yankees are denying this rumor, of course, because they would never admit that something from the Red Sox will be a permanent part of their own stadium. If it is true, that worker is my new hero. Why he didn't bury it underneath the home team clubhouse, though, remains a mystery.

Bringing NASCAR into the mix, Ryan Newman, right, won the Phoenix pole and is now tied
for tenth on the all-time pole winners list. Kyle Petty also proves more that he needs to retire as he failed to qualify and his #45 Dodge has missed three races in a row now. The Subway Fresh Fit 500 will be shown tonight at 8:00 pm on Fox.